Everything We Know About the Game of Thrones Spinoff

Currently untitled, the prequel is being referred to as The Long Night.

By
Sean O'Neal

Feb 5, 2019

HBO

On April 14, Game Of Thrones returns to HBO for its eighth and final season, promising to wrap up the sprawling fantasy with just another six hours or so of television. But of course, the story doesn’t end there. For one thing, author George R.R. Martin has promised to deliver at least two more novels in his A Song Of Ice And Fire series that started it all. For another, HBO has already begun working on ways to keep itself in swords, sandals, and sexual situations for years to come. Under cloak of darkness and PR spin, it’s been developing several new “successor shows”—Martin dislikes the word “spinoff”—to fill that looming void, and distract you from the fact that Martin still hasn’t finished those damn books. Even better, the first of these is gearing up to shoot this year. We’ve answered all the burning questions you might have below.

What’s the new Game of Thrones spinoff called?The series is currently untitled, although it’s commonly referred to as The Long Night, based on Martin’s own suggestion. “My vote would be The Long Night, which says it all, but I’d be surprised if that’s where we end up," Martin wrote on his website. "More likely HBO will want to work the phrase 'game of thrones' in there somewhere." And while The Long Night sort of sounds like an early-'90s erotic thriller starring Billy Baldwin, it does have a certain ring to it, not to mention a rich place in Westeros history: It's what legends called the deadly winter that lasted for an entire generation, a time of all-consuming darkness when the White Walkers first tried to destroy mankind.

When will we be able to watch it?HBO recently announced that filming of the pilot is slated to begin in early summer. The Belfast Telegraph previously reported that the production plans to shoot around the Canary Islands first, before returning to Game Of Thrones' longtime studio home in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, there’s already a staff of writers who are poised to start mapping out a full season, should they get the official go-ahead from the network. But the earliest you'd actually see anything is 2020, as HBO has said nothing new will air until at least a year after Game Of Thrones is over.

So does it have all my favorite Game Of Thrones characters embarking on even more adventures together?Haha, no! Not even the ones whose names you still haven’t learned after eight long seasons. No, this is set thousands of years before the events of both the novels and show—somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years prior to anything we've seen. The specific timeline depends on how you interpret Martin's maddeningly vague comments about whether you can trust the accuracy of "the oral histories of the First Man" within this completely fictional universe he invented, as well as the fuzzy math of the maesters tasked with recording them. Nevertheless, we know that "none of the characters or actors from Game Of Thrones will appear in the new show," Martin insists, as they’re still millennia away from being born. That includes dragons, he says, as even they had not yet been discovered. So it's all completely new—which is to say, incredibly old.

What's it about, then?According to the official synopsis, "The series chronicles the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. From the horrifying secrets of Westeros’s history to the true origin of the White Walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend, only one thing is for sure: It’s not the story we think we know."

Will it have anything we've heard of?We've definitely heard both the name and the legend of Brandon The Builder before (he’s the guy who built The Wall and founded House Stark), while House Lannister founder Lann the Clever has been mentioned in passing several times. Both could theoretically be a part of the show's timeline, at least. Some of those creepy Children of the Forest we’ve seen briefly would presumably also factor in, given the setting. But again, none of this is confirmed yet. And with all the preemptive talk of this being the true story behind all those untrustworthy legends, right now we can't rely on any of it.

Are the Game Of Thrones showrunners involved?They are not. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have both said they're done with the franchise as soon as season eight wraps. Instead, they're happily retiring from the burden of overseeing a massive, intricately interconnected fantasy saga with legions of demanding fans, opting to relax by wrangling a new series of Star Wars movies.

But George R.R. Martin is working on it?He's listed as an executive producer, and he says he's spent plenty of time with the writers offering his input and guidance—a role that will surely continue as the show progresses, seeing as it offers him another welcome distraction from finishing those damn books. Nevertheless, Martin has taken pains to say that this project really belongs to the showrunner, and it sounds like they've been given free rein (more or less) to create their own stories and worlds within his larger universe.

Who's the showrunner?Jane Goldman, a genre powerhouse whose screenplay credits include Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, both Kingsman movies, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, and Disney's upcoming live-action The Little Mermaid. Hailed as a "tremendous talent" and "major writer" by Martin, Goldman obviously also has ample experience in the worlds of both fantasy and action spectacle. Plus, her spec script—one of five potential prequels that were commissioned from five different writers (more on that in a bit)—was the only pitch that HBO decided was worth ordering a pilot for, which certainly speaks to its potential.

Who's directing the pilot?S.J. Clarkson will take the helm of the first episode, furthering a relationship with HBO that includes work on Vinyl and Succession. Her credits also include Jessica Jones, Orange Is The New Black, Dexter, and Heroes, and she was recently tapped to direct the next Star Trek movie—the first female director in that franchise's history.

Who's starring? Naomi Watts, coming off Showtime's Twin Peaks: The Return, continues her recent foray into prestige TV by taking the lead, playing a character who's been described as "a charismatic socialite hiding a dark secret." There's been plenty of theorizing about this mysterious Real Housewife of Westeros, of course, with some speculation that Watts could play everyone from a cunning, Cersei-like ruler, to a Melisandre-like sorceress who’s in league with the White Walkers, to maybe even the fabled Last Hero who eventually saves the kingdom from eternal winter. But then again, maybe we shouldn’t assume the whole story will revolve around Watts. Remember what happened with Sean Bean?

Anyone else?The rest of the confirmed cast may not have quite the name recognition, though it's worth remembering that we'd never heard of most of the Game Of Thrones cast either, once upon a time. Other up-and-comers who have been placed in as-yet-mysterious roles include Josh Whitehouse (Poldark), Naomi Ackie (Star Wars: Episode IX), Denise Gough (Juliet, Naked), Sheila Atim (Harlots), Ivanno Jeremiah (Humans), Georgie Henley (The Chronicles Of Narnia), and Alex Sharp (How To Talk To Girls At Parties), as well as Jamie Campbell Bower and Toby Regbo, who play Young Grindelwald and Young Dumbledore, respectively, in the Fantastic Beasts movies. It sure is a lot of fresh-faced, fantasy-experienced, mostly British talent.

What do we know about those other Game of Thrones prequels?There are at least three other potential prequels that are in some stage of development, Martin says. But at the moment, HBO is only interested in pursuing this one, understandably pacing itself on further milking its most valuable property. So it's entirely possible none or all of them could come to fruition someday, alongside that long-rumored adaptation of Martin's Dunk & Egg novellas—although on that last one, at least, Martin insists "that day is still a long way off," arriving well after he's finished writing the "seven or eight or 10 more" of those he has planned. Given the pacing of his Song Of Ice And Fire books, this could be long after we have all passed into legend ourselves. In the meantime, this project seems to be the franchise’s future, at least on television.

But I can definitely see more Game Of Thrones again soon, right?Yes. Again, the series returns April 14 for its six final episodes. That much we know for sure.

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